Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

ut turn around to examine the miracle of birth for evidence of the eternal,it becomes possible to rise above the egotistic concern for immortality, freeof the fear that darkens our days. This is what Emerson did and is why hecould write, “Infancy is the perpetual messiah, which comes into the armsof fallen men and pleads with them to return to paradise.”The miracle of birth and the mysterious unfolding of personality inchildhood, when we view it without the restrictive limitations of contemporaryscience, can confirm us in a spiritual life beyond the gates of time.Although the contemplation of death might make us “religious” out of fear,the contemplation of birth can give us a sense of the eternal, which can releasefrom that fear. And unless we can get free of that egotistical fear, we cannotexperience the free spiritual atmosphere in which love becomes possible.In early childhood we see the soul before its fall into egohood. Thechild acts as though the whole world were his because, living in the afterglowof spiritual unity, he experiences the world as himself. Gradually hebegins to differentiate himself functionally as an individual, on the basis ofhis immediate body experience, until at last he begins to refer to himself as“I,” usually at about the age of three. His memories of experiences in theworld then begin to adhere to and form themselves around this “I” to becomeeventually his ordinary ego, socially identified by his given name. Hispre-earthly soul life and its unselfconscious after-image in the first few yearsof life recede like a setting sun. At the same time his ordinary, earthly egorises—like the moon, its cosmic symbol—into the night sky of earthboundconsciousness.And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”How is man the image of the Great All, in whom we live and moveand have our being? Our bodies, being of the earth, are like the earth. Theego circling overhead first waxes and then wanes from youth to advancedage. And like the moon, this ego is no true light of itself, but a reflectionof the true light, which shines from the other side, the spiritual side, of thebody. The soul, being solar, abides with the spiritual sun, asleep in eternity,in dreaming life.“We are such stuff as dreams are made of,” Shakespeare wrote. Inthe night sky of earthbound consciousness we gaze upon our moon-egosand dream our lives until we experience what mystics have called “seeingthe sun at midnight.” But even while we are asleep in the dream of our individuallives, we are all one in the light of the spirit, even as the light fromseparate candles in a dark room merges to form one light.243